Parallel Lives

Some of us live parallel lives.

Our roots are spread so strongly in one place, our heads so familiar with the sky above our slice of earth that wherever we go we find ourselves strangely disconnected. Anywhere else is unfamiliar territory, anywhere else is a new colour of sky. 

I live a life like this. In days I walk on grey streets, under an unsmiling sky. In dreams I am bathing in sunshine, often harsh, sometimes soft, but always there. I live here, in between the black and grey of winter but summer's colours live inside me. In clothes and bedspreads, in picture frames and scarves. 

Many days I wonder why the few of us who live these parallel lives cannot shake off the sun and the chaos of what we think of as home. Why we can't find peace within the straight lines and the neatly trimmed gardens. Why we must fight the structure, always looking for our place among the fine gridlines of the societal viewfinder. 

Why we live so seamlessly in parallel worlds that greet our every morning and haunt our dreams.

I don't know why it is, but I live a life like this. 

I go home to my piece of sky. I plant my feet firmer into the rough soil, and my roots dig a little deeper. I look up and memorize the face of each cloud and the tune of every passing breeze. 

And when I return to my unsmiling sky, while I am living on the brink of two lives, I look down and I remember where my feet really are, and how deep my roots really go. 

Creating A Monster

We are all responsible for the rape of the 23-year old paramedic student in Delhi. 

Yes, all of us. 

We may not have been on that bus, and we may never think ourselves low enough to commit such a crime, but we are all to blame. 

Far too long has rape been someone else's problem. Far too long has Indian society been glorified for all its colour and vibrance without thought as to the things that need changing. And for far too long have we swept under the rug those dark deeds that happen in the dead of night because they never seem to concern us.

This rape has happened with our blessing. It took five penises and an iron rod to break this woman's body. But these men didn't materialise out of thin air. These are men of flesh and blood. They are all people we know. They are the men who ravage their brother's little girls when their parents aren't home. They are men who fondle your teenage sister as she waits to get on a bus. These are men who live in our buildings, shop in our corner-stores. They are the Manu Sharmas and the Santosh Kumar Singhs. They are Keenan and Reuben's drunk killers. These men are everywhere. And we have created these monsters.

We women too have birthed, nursed and nurtured these men. Mothers who dawdle over their sons so much that they grow up believing they will own every woman who enters their lives. Mothers-in-law who set fire to young girls because they can never be good enough or rich enough for their precious sons. Mothers who put their sons on a pedestal while their daughters do the dishes. Educated women who sit in first class carriages and stare disapprovingly at young college girls with tight jeans and make-up. Women who feel like failures when they don't birth sons. Women who will never admit to it, but in the deep recesses of their minds think to themselves...she was asking for it.

Not to forget fathers who play no role in sensitising their sons. Men who spend their entire lives believing daughters are a curse. Families who train their girls and boys to be silent witnesses, to back away from fights that don't involve them but are always surprised that nobody came to their rescue when it was their child in question.

All of us have created these rapists together. We have lovingly moulded them into repressed cowards who have no sense of propriety. Our movies condone them. Our advertisements glorify them. And since sex education is never going to be a subject in schools and we pretend to our children that babies are miraculously dropped from the heavens (since the word sex is taboo), we are only going to breed  repressed males for generations to come.

We have listened to the old refrain so many times it has become part of our thinking. As a woman, I am being silly if I walk down a dark alley at night. I am to blame. Regardless of the fact that the man in waiting is a human being with a choice. Regardless of the fact that we live in a free country and I should be free to go where I want to, wear what I want to, without being subject to some misplaced moral code. This is my body, I will do as I will with it. I refuse to believe that in any universe, it is my fault if you can't keep a grip on what's in your pants. If you believe otherwise, I will assume you have never known self-control or freedom of choice. 

This is not the first rape we have been witness to, nor is it going to be the last. This is not the first time a woman has been brutalised and left to die in the margins. Many more will come, and their blood will taint all our hands.

We let this happen. We join the ranks of all hypocritical societies that walk the earth. We are quick to blame the West for all the ills they have rained upon the world. And we are quick to defend our nation to everyone. But in the dead of the night, there are many voices that wake to haunt us, and we have many questions to ask of ourselves. To ask of our society, of our identity as Indians.

Oh yes, we are a nation of hypocrites. Led by a parliament that finds it hard to even make an attempt at a civilised form of dialogue. Our silence is costing us every 22 seconds as another woman finds herself inside some black abyss. Our candle-light marches and our facebook status messages and our words are hopeless in the face of these monsters. 

We should know. We're in the process of creating them at home everyday.

The Woman Who Can't Forget

Some time ago I watched a documentary on a lady who has a memory problem. 

By this, you would think that she had a problem remembering a lot of things. She doesn't. 

She has a problem forgetting.

Diagnosed with what scientists call an autobiographical memory, this lady remembers every single thing she said or did from the time she was fourteen. She remembers what she wore on her birthday fifteen years ago and what day of the week it was, what somebody said to her on that day, and at what time. She remembers everything. And yet says she would give anything in her power, to be able to forget. 

As I watched her story, I wondered what my life would be like if I couldn't forget. 

To be able to forget is a blessing. We are allowed to let our memories fade should we choose that for ourselves. We are allowed to let the pictures in our minds yellow over time, their edges cracked and brittle, the faces in them devoid of all life and detail. There is mercy in our universes, because we are allowed to let them blur into mist. With time, we can choose to put our little regrets in a balloon and snip the thread. What a gift that is.

Yes, there are things that are etched so deep we carry them to our graves. But that is also because we choose to for most part, because even with the pain, there is a greater need to remember, a lesson to be learned, a face to keep close. 

Imagine then, that you could remember every slight, every regret, every wrong turn you have taken, and every wrong that has been done to you. All of it buried so deep in your mind that you are unable to let go of it, forgive another person, or worse still, forgive yourself. So much of life is about learning a lesson and moving on. That must be hard for someone who can't forget, because like the lady says, her memories bring little solace now, she can't let go of a lot of things.

The deep ridges on my father's fingers, the shape of my mother's eyes, the echoes of laughter in our house, every tear I've shed... everything my mind touches triggers a new cloud from which more places and people emerge. All my love and learning, tears and regrets emerge from these clouds. For memories are invisible veils that shroud all our lives. They live inside us and around us. They breathe life into our souls. Or in this lady's case, suck the life out of us.

What Rilke Said

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

- Rainer Maria Rilke,

Letters to a Young Poet

This is why I love the written word.

Home

I have long suspected that houses live their own secret lives.

I’ve lived in many houses over the last few years and some of them have become homes and some of them have remained strangers. I often wonder what makes them behave this way. I suppose they have their own ideas of what suits them and what doesn’t. 

I’ve lived in difficult houses where every room was a stranger to its siblings and where the bitter cold would never give way to the warmth. But I’ve also lived in houses where the walls were friends with sunshine and others which were small but had big hearts.

The house I live in now is a hundred years old. I find myself looking at the walls and wondering how many layers of dreams and wallpaper lie between the first people who lived here and me. I find it fascinating that this house would have seen two World Wars and the rise and fall of heroes and tyrants alike. 

This is a house that can become a home. It is warm and it has known love, I think. For the moment it has accepted the colour riot I have brought to its rooms with an air of quiet grace. Of course, what with all their stories, the doorknobs are wobbly and the floorboards creak their age.

 But I have a sneaky suspicion that in spite of all the chips and the groaning, this house is an old, cheerful soul. 

And I think we are going to be friends. 

The Diary Of Anne Frank

Seventy years ago, Prinsengracht 263 was home to a very beautiful little girl. Of course, at the time she didn't think so. She longed to look more like her best friend, or be like her sister in some ways. But we know now, as anyone who has ever read her diary does, how very special Anne Frank truly was.

A few weeks ago I visited Prinsengracht 263 or what is now the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. On the outside, it is a lively place, full of snaking tourist lines and laughter. Inside, a hush descends as people climb the stairs to the Secret Annexe that was to be Anne's last home. The museum is beautifully maintained, with quotes from Anne's diary plastered neatly onto the walls. There are pictures of her with her family at different stages of their lives. But the halls are haunted; by the pictures and the words.

I first read Anne Frank's diary when I was a schoolgirl. I wasn't much older than Anne herself when she began writing it and my mother introduced me to her. It was a relationship that would impact my  world-view and my life. It was a relationship that has lasted to this day. When my father encouraged me to start keeping a journal, my first ever entry stated that I would name my diary Kitty, after Anne's own prized possession (“Because paper has more patience than people”).

Later when I caught myself cringing at the name, I told myself that I should be proud to have begun my love affair with words with Anne's blessing. I never cringed after that. Anne Frank's diary taught me more about prejudice and the follies of the human race than anything I had ever read until then.

So when I walked into the Anne Frank Museum, I was a stranger meeting an old friend, going back in time to a place where both Anne and I shared a little bit of our growing-up years. I have read her diary at least thrice and while I had many details committed to memory, some escaped me. 

But as I walked up the stairs, through the faded bookcase, and into Anne's room, I felt her walk with me. And I heard her voice as she asked out loud, "Why do some people have to starve, while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world? Oh,why are people so crazy?”  I was surprised to find I didn't have an answer. Perhaps it's because the world is still like that, Anne. Not much has changed and I wish I could tell you that people have learnt from Death, from your death too, but I don't think they have.

Anne's precious clippings of movie stars and other people and things that caught her fancy are plastered onto the walls of the tiny room she shared with one other person. I looked closely at them and imagined a loving Otto Frank pasting them onto the walls so his daughter would feel more at home when the time came to move into the Annexe. And I imagined Anne inside that room, cooped up without once feeling the wind in her face and the sun in her eyes and I could not begin to understand how she wasn't consumed by hate.

The irony of it all is that even in the darkest corner of the Annexe I could see a hopeful Anne, waiting and wishing to start truly living. “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Only someone with immense strength of heart and mind could say this after being locked away out of prejudice and hate. 

As I looked closely at the elegant and measured writing in the yellowed pages of her diary, I  wondered if the human race had truly taken lessons from History. The Museum is now a commercial enterprise that keeps the memory of a special voice of history alive. While it lives, every child on the planet ought to read the book and visit the Museum. Children must learn early about how fatal prejudice can be. 

In the end, as Otto Franks spoke to us about his daughter, the child he loved but didn't fully understand until he read her diary, I felt the need to weep. For the girl that lived and laughed and loved and died without knowing how much she would mean to the world, and to another girl so very far away in time and space. “I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains,” said Anne. 

And as I left the Museum with tears in my eyes, I saw the words float out of her diary, the words of a young girl who died before her time, who knew sorrow and hate but still lived with her head held high, with hope in her heart, teaching humanity lessons for all eternity... “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” 

The Pale Blue Dot II

(I decided to break up this post to avoid putting the few readers I have to sleep. Please read the post below this before you dig into this one so it makes a wee bit more sense)

If I had one superpower I would want to be able to see the Earth from outer space.

In the movies, the scene is always breathtaking. A general hush descends on the astronauts as they all huddle around the small window that allows them a glimpse of a floating orb streaked with white, blue and green. Someone always sheds a tear. Others tend to wonder if they'll ever set foot on it again since their capsule is now in flames.

Whatever the scenario, I do think that that must be one of the most poignant moments that it one could witness in a lifetime. I watched as the Voyager turned to photograph the earth from it's position at the edge of our solar system and it struck me that Carl Sagan description of the Earth was beautiful: a pale blue dot. 

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how the Earth would look in its entirety. How very small we would all be and how very silly our everyday bickering about race and class and nationality would all look. I thought of myself moaning a minute ago about my various problems and I suddenly felt very small indeed.

Look at the picture below and see if you can spot us. Most people who read this blog would have been alive then, so see if you can spot the little speck in the brown stream. If you can, revel in the moment. That's us.

Image

But nobody could ever put it better than Sagan himself when he said this about the little speck he called the Pale Blue Dot...

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The words always make me feel like I am part of a much, much larger picture than I will or can ever understand. And I think maybe we all need to close our eyes sometimes and see ourselves from outer-space. 

I think there comes a time in all our lives when all we need is a little perspective.

The Pale Blue Dot- 1

When I was a child (it's funny how many of my stories begin with that line) I had an absurd fascination for the planets and stars. I remember thumbing through my Young Scientist books, absorbed by the giants of the night and their stories. 

I distinctly remember wanting to be an astronomer. Of course, at the time I had no idea what an astronomer's work entailed except that it would mean I could spend hours trying to discover the mysteries of space. Somewhere around the fifth grade, my Science and Maths skills rocketed away into the night sky, never to return, and with it went my cherished dream of studying the stars.

Then I chanced upon the BBC's Wonders of the Universe. I love Dr. Brian Cox- for his brain of course, but also because he is possibly the only person I know who can make the laws of physics and the scientific jargon sound like he's reciting poetry. Also I must mention here that it was my husband who introduced me to the program. He gets quite caught up in it. (I've always suspected that he wasn't from this planet. And we do watch a lot of outer-spacey programs. Hmmm.)

So on his recommendation I watched a wonderful documentary called Voyager: To The Final Frontier, which provided a gripping insight into the story of the two Voyager space probes, both of which carried the famous Golden Records, discs that even as you read this are floating away from the Earth with sounds and images of the essence of humankind. All this information is stored in binary code just in case it drifts into alien radar in 40,000 years. 

Of course, while we won't be around to see if that does happen (scientists estimate that it will be that long until the next star comes into contact with the first of the probes), I think it's fascinating that all that material is just waiting to be found. I've always believed life exists elsewhere in the universe. We are far too naive if we believe we are the only ones here. Even the word 'here' in this last sentence is a misnomer.

How do we even know where we are and how much there is around us if we can't see it all?

Image Courtesy

Disciplining Unemployment

I think the only truly terrible thing about unemployment is the utter lack of discipline that comes with it.

Well, there is the small matter of your goals and dreams being put on hold indefinitely, but we'll ignore that for a minute, shall we? Like most people of my age I have had spells of unemployment after university and in-between jobs, but since none of that ever went beyond 3 months, I feel like I am now on a sabbatical of sorts.

Much has happened between when I quit my job as a teacher and now, when I sit in here with twilight seeping into both the room and my mind. It is quite impossible to explain how leaving home and the job I loved most in the world left me feeling bereft. However, I gained a husband in the process and though the transition from my old life to my new life has been painful, I am still quite sure that this is generally how life is supposed to work, and so I plod on. 

Anyhow, after giving myself this hasty assurance, I find myself in a situation where I have a lot of time on my hands. In many ways, what I fear most is looking back on this time and feeling like I didn't make the most of it. So this time I'm doing it right. Or well, trying to.

My first decision was to stop applying for jobs. 

More specifically, stop applying for jobs at every waking moment of the day. I would apply through the day, after lunch, through the evening and in a last-ditch attempt at night before bed. Then I woke up thinking that when I finally did land a job, however far down the line, I'd have nothing to show for all the months I had at home. No writing, which is like oxygen to me. No new skills. Nothing but hours and hours of staring at a stupid screen in the hope that someone would read my CV. What a colossal waste of time. 

So now I give myself a window of two or three of my best hours in the morning to apply for jobs. Beyond that, I am going to get a life.

For one, I am teaching myself Spanish. I hope to take classes later, but for now this is great. It leaves my neighbours in a strange position where they have to hear strange Spanish words being called out loud at intervals, but I'm sure they'll live. I only wish they were Spanish and could call back. Now that would be something.

I have also done more DIY in this past few weeks than I can remember doing in years. I've prettied up shoeboxes and wine bottles. I start my day early and I've not had an afternoon siesta on a weekday since I left India three months ago. I am also in the process of making gifts for the festive season. I have written letters and I have read the entire Game of Thrones series too. I would call these accomplishments. Umm. I understand that you may not share my optimism.

I do genuinely hate being out of work. I hate not being able to contribute to something. But most of all, I hate having so much time and not putting it to good use. I've never taken a year off- not after college and not after university so I'm telling myself that to slow down and breathe. That it's okay. That I have family and friends that form the pillars of my everyday life, a husband who is more than supportive and a chance to soak up some much needed inspiration to write. For now, that has to be enough.

Most of all I am telling myself that I will find a place in the world. Or it will find me. Because we are both heading in the same direction. Because things cannot always stay this way. And this time will never come again.

The Game of Thrones

I just finished reading The Game of Thrones series last week. 

That is to say the five books that have been written- there are two more being written though at the rate at which G. R. R. Martin writes books, they may not be out till I have gray hair and four babes hanging onto my knees.

I tried not to get addicted to the books (knowing fully well that I would fail miserably). So now I am in that terrible place where the cliffhangers have left me with disintegrated nails and I feel like my life has no purpose. That is exactly how I felt when I finished the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and well, every series or book I have read and loved. 

Titled very poetically (the series is called the Song of Ice and Fire), the characters in the Game of Thrones are beautifully grey. Even the best ones have their good traits and some of the worst ones have redeemable qualities. The prose runs simply and makes for an engrossing and detailed read. However, now that I have finished the first five and will probably have to wait six or eight years for the next book (and quite possibly another six or so for the final instalment), I might as well jump off the closest cliff in my bid to end the suspense for myself. 

I can see my mother's eyes going wide at that last sentence so I will hasten to assure her here that no, I will do no such thing. Worry not.

But oh the horror of the wait!

Of course, while I wait, I can join countless fellows-in-waiting and laugh at the many jokes that have resulted in an actual video ode...that is...err..shall we say a plea in song to G.R.R. Martin...(this will be more fun after you've read the books!)

The words, by Paul and Storm:

George R. R. Martin, please write, and write faster
You’re not going to get any younger, you know
Winter is coming, I’m growing impatient
And you’ve still got two more damn books left to go
So write, George, write like the wind!

I curse the day that my friend ever loaned me
An old dog-eared paperback called Game of Thrones
How could I know that this seed would grow into
An addiction that held me, right down to my bones

Now, five books later, I lurk with the masses
Indignant, entitled, and waiting for word
That the great Bearded Glacier has finally published
Nine hundred more pages of crack for the nerds

Why does every new verse of your song
Keep taking you so goddamn long?

George R. R. Martin, please write, and write faster
please give us boiled leather, and sigils and steel
We need our allotment of incest and intrigue
And six page descriptions of every last meal
So write, George, write like the wind!

Lewis took five years to chronicle Narnia
Tolkien had twelve years, and Rowling took ten
Lucas spent nearly three decades on Star Wars
And we all know how that one turned out in the end

You’re not our bitch, and you’re not a machine
And we don’t mean to dictate how you spend your days
But please, bear in mind, in the time that you’ve had,
William Shakespeare churned out thirty-five friggin’ plays

And if you keep writing so slow
You’ll hold up the HBO show

George R. R. Martin, please write, and write faster
‘cause we won’t stop whining until we’re appeased
Crap out the chapters–and George, while you’re at it
Stop killing our favorite characters, please
And write, George, write…like the wind!

(George R.R. Martin, please write, and write faster
Before you are dead, George, please write like the wind)

I love the dig about the HBO series too- I've watched both seasons and the casting is both brilliant and addictive. 

Like Paul and Storm, it makes me more than slightly uncomfortable that GRR isn't getting any younger. 

I will definitely lose the will to live if he doesn't get his books out before he leaves to take his place among the stars. But at least I won't be the only one. 

Of course, for the moment I have bigger things to worry about.

Like the fact that winter is coming....

Of Alphabets

I don't think we really realise the true wonder that the alphabet is. 

That every permutable combination is unique. That we can describe so much of our lives, all that we see and behold in awe, every insignificant and significant detail of our everyday- with just these innocuous looking lines. And while we spend the majority of our lives without giving much thought to magnifying the beauty that the alphabet is, I like to spend one day every year going back to the roots of my writing.

Every Dusshera, India celebrates the start of the festive season. The lights go up, laughter (and excessively loud music) fills the streets, and there is a general air of warmth and celebration all 'round. In the South of India, children are told to lay their books at Goddess Saraswati's feet (Saraswati being the Goddess of learning and the arts), and reclaim them on the day of Dusshera.

I'm not big on rituals. At all. I would go so far as to say I try to avoid doing anything that doesn't mean anything to me. That's not to say I don't love festivals, or I don't like tradition. In my mind they are all different things- closely linked, yes, but I don't have to love something that doesn't touch me in any way. I don't feel the need to practise any empty rituals year on year simply because it's the thing to do.  Right, but that's not what this post is about.

But some rituals stay with me. Most are embedded in my mind the way they are because my parents taught me to respect the meaning behind the rituals much more than the rituals themselves. Perhaps that was why there were so few as I was growing but they have always meant a lot to me.

In Kerala, on the day of  Dusshera or Vijayadashami, we have a tradition of welcoming toddlers between the ages of two and three into the fold of letters. They sit on the laps of their parents and their plump baby fingers are guided over grains of rice to form the words Om Namo Ganapathaye Namaha. Most children at that age either wonder where the food's at, or enjoy the feel of the grains. But the significance of the ritual is immense.

Education is a privilege that is not granted to everyone. As Indians we should understand that and value it immensely because perhaps as citizens of a country of contrasts we know best how life can revolve around these letters. As the wee babes are initiated into the world of knowledge, we simultaneously acknowledge the role and the gift that education is. And every year on Vijayadashami since I was a child, my father would make me write out the letters of the alphabet in the three languages I know- English, Hindi and Malayalam. In the years that I'm away from home, I have to be told when to do it (and replace my dad's voice with the computer screen for help with Malayalam letters- only one or two dad, promise).

As I grow I find that the significance of the ritual grows with me. And so this year as so many times before, I got a paper and a pen and sat down to do what I'd done so many years before as a child. Only this time I said a silent prayer for the gift of the alphabet.

Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book

A few years ago as I sat behind a wooden bench surveying the blackboard and the professor before me with the fatigued and listless brain that only a teenager in a classroom can possess, a magical thing happened.

The professor whipped out a lovely-looking book and held it out for all to see. In itself this was not, I grant you, as magical a happening as one would hope for but it was in that moment that I first made the acquaintance of Lady Cottington and her Pressed Fairy Book.

I dreamed about it for years afterward, and of the flitting wings that lay so carefully preserved within it's yellowed pages. Last week, thanks to some generous albeit unwitting individual, I acquired a copy of my own. And so it is my honour to present to you, a small glimpse into Lady Cottington's world...

Now before we go any further, I must warn you. This book is not for the faint-hearted. It is a diary of events that proves to the world that Lady Angelica Cottington did what no one else has done before and since. She saw (and captured) fairies for the world to see. 

However, that's only the half of it. For one, the fairies don't all look like we imagined them to...

Yes, that's a fairy alright. It has to be. Look, that's the stain he left on the other side of the page. With Lady Cottington's writing on it, documenting the event. 

Oh wait, this is a slightly prettier one. Even if she does look anguished. Well, pressed fairies do have to be, you know...pressed. 

Of course as Lady Cottington found to her dismay, not everyone believes in fairies. Not now, not then. Even if they can see them with their own eyes. Like most little girls however, this didn't deter her. She went on to fill an entire book with the little beings.

 She would wait patiently with her book open until a particularly cheeky (or curious) fairy flew by. But as quick and nimble as she was some got away....

...and some stained the pages of her book with a massive PFFFSSSPPPT!!!

And then Angelica went on to document their wily ways and their expressions too, while they were flitting by, unaware of the fate was to befall them.

But, for those of you who are aghast that these petite little flyaways were subjected to such torture, here's a small note from the RSPCA

And for those of you who didn't believe in fairies before this post, I suggest you go and look up Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book and see for yourself how her story turned out and most importantly, what became of all the fairies.

Quarter Century

I turned 25 today. 

Well, sometime in between the dark of the night and the wee hours, to be precise. But that is unimportant. The number looms large. 25. 

I was thinking to myself in the week leading up to today, more like doing a quick retrospective of this quarter century of my life and I thought of this list I'd made four years ago. It was my to-do list, made at a time when I had finished college, and the world and all that was in it was mine to conquer and swallow whole. That was before the events of November 2008 transpired and so much changed. Yet when I looked at the list I realized that though the person who made that list was a much more hopeful  being compared to the one she became later on, we were both able to tick a number of things off the list, sometimes together, sometimes on our own paths.

I have watched musicals, a football game (Chelsea, not Arsenal), screamed my guts out at live concerts, sung loudly and raucously on the street, gawked happily at Cirque du Soleil shows, travelled until my feet ached, learned to be more sure of myself (this is a relative statement, mind you) and been able to move freely, unescorted in a wonderful city, taking in the sights and sounds by myself. I still haven't mastered my temper, grown a garden of any size, gone to art school and I am still horrendous at remembering birthdays. 

Well anyway, that wasn't the point, but since this is my birthday post, I am allowed to digress a little bit. 

So as I was saying... 

I wondered to myself about what it is that I wanted out of my next twenty five years. Well, I had a creased-forehead, furrowed-brow minute and then the answer shone down on me from above. Okay nothing that dramatic happened because the answer was simple. I still feel like the world is my oyster, and my life is before me, so I am still going to want to swallow up the world. However, I would like to love more, laugh more and be a generally more easygoing individual, which is hard work for me, I'll tell you considering I criticise most people and myself to bits. 

Anyhow, I digress again.

I want to look back in 25 years and feel like I've lived it up. That I've had a lot of fun and loved and laughed and lived. But most of all I want to feel like I've made a difference. In the process if I make a mark of some kind or a crater, I'll be ecstatic. But at 50, if I can look back and think, I've made a difference somewhere in the world, however small the place is, I think I will rest easy then. 

Before I plan the next 25 years of course.

The Teachers' Day Blues

I woke up today feeling very far away from home. Before I swung myself out of bed, I took a minute to be thankful for the past year, when I was given the opportunity to teach a motley bunch of students. As it turned out, and as I still maintain, they taught me much more than I have ever had a chance to teach them.

So this year as I woke to September the fifth, Teachers' Day in India, I felt very strange. I miss teaching more than anything else I have ever done and I do believe that for the past one year my entire universe aligned itself so that I was in the right place at the right time. Today I woke up feeling that I was farthest from that point of absolute congruence with everything and everyone around me.

Until I checked my email.

I have had a number of notes come my way from students in the time that I taught, but to be so far away from sight and daily routine and still be remembered was something I didn't really expect, nor think about until today. My inbox has been flooded with messages from students, personalized notes wishing me in the loveliest of words. And I am so touched. 

I used the word 'quiet' a lot, in a bid to subdue my most energetic class, and so, being the cunning, intelligent beings they are, they've chosen a fitting picture and sent it back to me as a reminder of all the times I yelled at them and took them around Bombay for photography classes. 

Apart from this colourful surprise, I am also still sifting through my FB inbox, and I am so touched I cannot begin to describe it in words. And that is saying something. 

The Big V

“...to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.” 

-Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues

I hold Eve Ensler in very high regard.

Not only because she uses the word 'vagina' so easily and with such fluidity (usage that is alien to us Indians, even though as women we ought to know better than to shy away from such a crucial body part), but because what she says about The Big V too...

“The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the 

vagina. The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change it's shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina. It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the vagina. I was there in the room. I remember.” 

 When I first read The Vagina Monologues, I remember feeling an intense sense of wonder at all the experiences women wrote about where this most mysterious of orifices was concerned. Growing up in India, I can't remember any female adult ever actually saying the word vagina out loud. It was too deeply steeped in taboo perhaps, or just too crude a word to say out loud. As I grew up, my fiercely outspoken and fiendishly straightforward friends changed that. 

And yet I wonder to this day why the word doesn't come easily to so many of us. I've seen men and women flinch at the sound of the word on someone else's tongue. Casual banter has turned into severe awkwardness when the word has dropped like a bombshell onto a conversation. Strange, because so much of our lives as women revolves around our vaginas. 

It is a defining characteristic that we share with others of our species, but it is also so much more than that. In some communities it dictates how lives will be fashioned. Whether we will bear scars or songs of our vaginas, we know how deeply it affects us as women. The blood, the pain, the tearing, the cramps, the wonders of childbirth, the very crux of life seems to have evolved from this one place. And yet we are wary of talking about it, of celebrating it, of truly embracing our forms, our bodies. 

“I bet you're worried. I was worried. I was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don't think about them.” 

One, Two, Three.

At this point in my life, three things are happening. Well, actually one could say there's nothing happening, but I suppose that would be a lie since the world and life are never very still, so here goes...

One. 

Thanks to my big brother (who I suspect may be a superhero or alternatively a benign version of Megamind), I have rekindled my awe of the internet. Why? Because I have found that one bastion that refuses to succumb to the growing insanity and clutter that is social media today: Brain Pickings. 

Although much of my time is spent reading the older posts (my one aim in life is now to read every single brainpickings post there is which may well take up my life completely considering it's updated every often), I feel like my brain is rekindled again, just by re-reading the words of the world's Greats. I am in awe, I feel a sense of child-like wonder, and I truly want to absorb every word on those pages.

God Bless Maria Popova. 

Two.

I have finally channeled my frustrations at being unemployed, and have attempted to make the difficult move into gainful unemployment by starting The Word Songs Project. It's not really the most scientific blog there is, but it gives me warm fuzzies inside to see how the written word has affected so many lives, so simply, in the smallest of ways. The contributions are coming in, from absolute strangers too, and I am in love with the idea of being able to showcase how the world is a better place with a kinder word (or vice versa).

Those of you who tell me you read my blog from the shadows, please do come into the light and find the time and inclination to contribute.

Three.

I am finally learning to cook. Hallelujah.

The World Book Encyclopedia

Staring out at me each morning from the lowest shelf in my bookcase is a row of perfectly aligned books. Each time I look at them, I feel like I'm looking at what could be royalty where books are concerned.

With muted gold letters that have been etched into rich brown coverlets, The World Book Encyclopedia, that most distinguished and majestic of all written material available to young people in the nineties has now been relegated to the bottom shelf for some years now. Yet this entire family of books still has a stately air about it. As a child, I remember my parents sitting down with a young salesperson to discuss the vast set of books (and their price no doubt). They've had to make a lot of tough decisions regarding their slightly deranged only-child, but even in hindsight, this remains one of their best ones.

Once I got my hands on them, I was a child possessed. I pored over them, used them to feed my thirsty curiosity about Egyptian and Greek Gods, the Second World War, the Holocaust, Einstein....anything that sparked a fever in my young and impressionable mind, I would turn to the World Book to for the answers . Needless to say, probably the only pages I never looked up (willingly at least) were the ones that had anything to do with Math. For everything else, the World Book was my oyster. And I was perfectly content to revel in its pages.

Along with the main set of books came two other additional series. One was called The Young Scientist, and the other was titled Childcraft. The former had every possible aspect of Science within it's ten books, perhaps more than a geeky seven-year-old like me could fathom, but I embraced it with a passion that my Science teacher would have given her left arm to witness if it were in the classroom. My favourites included Planet Earth, Investigating Light, and The Human Body. Don't ask me why. I was fascinated by them all, but some of them stood out, calling me repeatedly and even today the well-thumbed pages are evidence of the fact that some books were more loved than others. 

My Childcraft favourites were Stories and Poems and Make and Do. Both of which called to the creative child in me, and I remember staring at the pages in wonder, thinking about how mixing this colour and this would actually give me THAT! To my almost baby brain, this was like the discovery of the Holy Grail. Also, the kids in the books looked really happy, and they smiled sagely as they conducted their experiments, never once letting on that the cleaning-up afterward would not be pretty. 

So much of who I am and what I enjoy doing comes from those wonderful hours spent thumbing lovingly through these books. As a child, I thought I'd be an astronomer, because my love of planets was absolute and I thought that outer space was the biggest, most amazing mystery there was to discover. Of course, when reality struck I realized I had no head for numbers and so that dream vanished in a few years. However, I still enjoy watching Dr. Brian Cox take me through the Wonders of the Universe and I attribute that to the images I first saw in my Stars and Planets book. I also remember the beautiful illustrations in my Stories and Poems book that did far more for my imagination than Cartoon Network ever did.

Though the main series still shines out at me every morning, my Childcraft and Young Scientist books have been packed away, giving way to other bundles of joy that take up my reading time. Of course, there is a lot more information available now than there was then, with the internet leading the way with cutting edge imagery and audio-visuals. Everything is google-able, just a click away. Being a child now is so much easier (and harder, I know) than it was then. 

But if I have to pack my babies up in a jute bag and smuggle them into a room and make sure they start out learning about life and the world and people and art through the latest editions of the World Book Encyclopedia (and perhaps some of the old ones too), then you can bet on all the stars and planets there are that I will do just that. And then I'll sit back and smile as their little eyes light up in wonder at simple drawings on the page before them. 

Summer Vacations

When I was a child, we lived in the Middle East, which meant that to avoid being fried to a crisp in the sweltering months of June and July, we would take our yearly vacations to India.

As that glorious time of year approached, like all healthy children I would feel a heady sense of excitement, a rush that even to this day remains unparalleled. After all the formalities and customary obligations were fulfilled, we would exit the airport. And there, without fail, every single year, our family awaited us. Overwhelmed by a flurry of hugs and kisses, we would all stand there, a small microcosm of arms and legs exuding great excitement and love. And every year, also without fail, the heavens would weep as we drove away from the airport. This would lead to the same cheery comments each year: 'You brought the rains with you', and more memorably, 'Vashi bridge is sinking' (always to be delivered while our car was on the said bridge). I still count those arrivals among my most cherished moments as a child. 

The first morning after we'd arrived, there would be a lot of chaos in the house. I would wake to my aunts and my mother speaking in hushed voices in the kitchen, to vessels clanging, to muffled laughter and the sound of birds chirping. The landscape of the living room would resemble an obstacle course, with the long-limbed bodies of the male folk lying strewn across in various positions, angling to fit almost anywhere, under the dining table, the sofa, anywhere there was space to be found and possessed. I loved waking up to the noise and even today when we get together, though I usually wake up when the sun is high, I love listening to the sound of my family bustling about together.

Then came the beautiful sunny mornings where we ran about screaming our lungs out in a way only the most carefree children can understand. I still remember the flushed cheeks and scraped knees, the  cool of the steel glasses of water gulped down in a rush, the hot evenings and the smell of the cake and crunch of the wafers at the birthday parties I tagged along to. All of this coupled with the fact that I was spoiled rotten by my aunts (something that outlasted childhood vacations into everyday adulthood), and the fact that there wasn't any homework to do, meant I was truly in Childhood Heaven. Even the sibling rivalry with my cousins and my painful need to cry about everything (especially earthworms and ants, much to everyone else's mirth) didn't interfere with my peaceful sleep every night. 

Our liaisons with the television were few and far between. We watched with awe as videotapes slid into VCD players and images of Tarzan, Simba and a variety of other animated beings danced across the screens. My knowledge and love of all animated characters stems from those days we spent sprawled across the floor watching them over and over till we knew all the songs. I distinctly remember spending a lot of time with my cousins' GIJoes with brief moments of confusion when purple and yellow ponies from My Little Pony entered the fray on occasion. 

When we graduated to playing Scotland Yard and Cluedo, only my eldest cousin could be the robber and the murderer respectively, because the rest of us were too undeveloped in years (my cousin would argue brains) to do anything remotely strategic. We had one pair of roller skates between three of us and fights for the right foot would inevitably ensue (the left promising many more sinister slips and ungainly crashes than the right) and with this amazing pair we would play our version of Around the World in Eighty Days, with my eldest cousin being Phileas Fogg, hiding from the two, sometimes three annoying Passepartout(s). Birthday parties at home meant there would always be paper streamers lettering the walls with names and a slightly crooked but painstakingly created Happy Birthday somewhere. And lots of lovely homemade food.

When I think back to those times, I am grateful for a lot of things. The fact that the television wasn't as important to living as it is now, the fact that a lot of our time was spent devising games that nobody in the world could comprehend but us, the fact that left to our own devices we perfected the art of entertaining ourselves even during the power cuts by making wax medals to give each other. My memories of those days are in muted technicolour.  So much love and beauty and naivety. We lived a charmed life.

Someday when I have children of my own, I hope they can understand this feeling. That childhood can be made beautiful almost anywhere, if you're lucky enough to be born into a family that cares about you. That boredom can be chased away when the littlest of people put their heads together, that when you're a child, laughter from your toes, the kind that dances through the air and settles on all the adults around is the most beautiful kind. That the memories you make when you're a child live with you long after you grow up and grow old. 

I hope that someday my children will have vacations like mine, where they feel alive with every breath, where they discover beauty, where curiosity fills their veins and adventure lies around every bend, where wonder fills their eyes and awe blooms in their hearts, where the laughter tinkles on far, far into the future.

My Million Chances

In my soul I feel a sea raging. I feel the waves ebb with a quiet serenity and then hit the shore with a ferocity that takes my breath away.

I feel a tug so strong and yet the direction is unclear. I am being pulled toward the sky, to skim over clouds and I am being ground into the earth, turning to dust, mingling with all the ages of time.

I want to move forward and I put on my cape to fly and then I feel it snag on the branch of an invisible tree, a solitary sentinel guarding against the flight of the arrogant and the naivety of youth. I feel my hands splayed over the bark, begging it, kissing it and whispering to it to let me go. To let me spell my dreams out and then have them fly me away into a mist-kissed horizon.

I feel a fire raging behind my eyes. The melting brown turns to speckled orange and then to a blinding golden yellow until it consumes my face and my body and I melt into it, singing all the while that I need to be let go of, that I need to let go. That I want to cast imprints on earth and time and be remembered. That I want to make a mark, I want to dig my feet into the soil and grow roots and search restlessly and thirstily for love and water. For anything that will give life. 

I can feel the light inside me dull and brighten. Dull. Brighten. Dull. Brighten. Dull. Until I can feel it like the throbbing of my heart. It waits for me to open my eyes to the spray of the seawater, so the salt can sting and the light can stay on and shine outward. Out of my eyes and my mouth and my fingertips and my toes. 

I want to breathe my life in. Not yours. I want to eat my dreams up until they fill me up and I find the strength to raise my voice and say this, this is what I want. When I close my eyes I want to dream my dreams, not yours, I want to find roads that lead to my dreams, not roundabouts that lead to yours, giving me a chance in a million to be what I can be, when all I want is all my million chances. 

Listen

Yesterday I lay on my side reading a book, and my ear folded in on itself.

In the following minute I felt a peace I haven't felt in a long time. I shut the book, closed my eyes and lay still for a minute. I was listening to my heart beat.

The next time I have to put my life into perspective, I'm going to lie on my side and make my ear fold in on itself. Then I'm going to lie there for the next few minutes and smile to myself as my body and my heart give my mind a gentle drubbing.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Listen.

You're alive.